It’s no good trying to find shelter from the ancient malignancy because trying to find shelter from the ancient malignancy is the malignancy. It’s no good running away from that malignancy because it is the running away. It thrives on our attempts to evade it. The ancient malignancy reproduces itself ceaselessly, tirelessly, effortlessly. It multiplies exponentially. It becomes the universe. Was there ever anything as good at reproducing itself as the ancient malignancy? Was there ever any bacterium, any virus, as persistent? Is it any wonder that no one ever tries to stop it reproducing? With an enemy as formidable as this it makes no sense at all to go against it. If you can’t beat them then you have to join them, isn’t that what they say? And that’s just what we have done. We don’t stand up against the malignancy – we fall over ourselves in our hurry to do its bidding. We betray each other in our fervour to show ourselves to be the better slave. We say that anything which stands in the way of the ancient malignancy and its terrible effectiveness is the enemy, the scourge. We come down on anyone who obstructs the will of the malignancy harder than we come down on anything. Our spite is instant and total. Our outrage is complete, our condemnation irrevocable. We won’t even try to understand how someone could be wrong-headed enough to oppose the malignancy. Obstructing the ancient malignancy and its terrible reproductive efficiency is surely the greatest of all sins, the most heinous of all crimes. This is by definition true – the more terrible the efficiency, the more heinous a crime it is to stand up against it. The more terrible the efficiency, the more we are damned for daring to oppose it, the more beyond the pale we are. The more alone we are. None will speak out in our defence. What choice do any of us have – seek thou the approval of the ancient malignancy! Seek thou the approval of the ancient malignancy! Seek thou the approval of that most ancient and most malignant of enemies! Only we don’t call it the malignancy. We don’t call it the enemy. Oh no. We don’t call it that at all. We call it something else. We call it ‘society’. We call it ‘the common good’…